Merlin Mann of 43folders presented a talk titled “Inbox Zero” at Google this past Monday. Inbox Zero echoes the bit literacy concepts promoted by Mark Hurst. The video is an hour long, but Merlin provides a compelling argument for proactively managing your inbox.
Source: 43folders
Knowledge management is like teenage sex. Everyone is talking about it all the time, everyone thinks everyone else is doing it, almost no one is really doing it although everyone is bragging about it, and those who are doing it aren’t doing it very well. - Randy Harless
The unspoken truth behind this clever quote is that there are still some teenagers having good sex — and some companies doing KM well.
Originally seen in CIO Insight back in 2001 and resurfaced by John Maloney.
For those of us for those of us comfortable with blogs, wikis and forums, the collaborative benefits of social software are clear. Why then do most businesses still rely on email more than anything? Social software expert Suw Charman has presented her views on why corporate adoption rates for social software tools still lag behind email in this great presentation.
Stephanie Booth has summarized the salient points on what keeps people from diving into the social software pool:
Low-level fear of social humiliation. How are they going to come across to their peers and bosses? Fear of making mistake. People don’t realise they’re afraid, they just feel a bit uncomfortable talking /publicly/ to their collegues. E-mail is different because it feels private, it’s 1-1 communication. You’re not exposing yourself as much. People become “shy” when you give them a very public place to work.
Also, some people aren’t comfortable in writing. Some are better talkers than writers, and are not comfortable writing in a semi-formal environment. E-mail is more informal. Blogs and wikis are perceived as requiring a higher level of writing skill. Again, people don’t admit to this.
This doesn’t happen in very open organisations, but often if permission isn’t explicitly given to use such tools, that will really get in the way. “Blogs as diaries”, etc — psychological mismatch. What the boss /thinks/ blogs are, and what they are used for in business.
Trust in the tool. “So you mean anybody can change my stuff?” for wikis. “Can I stop them?” Not comfortable trusting the content placed in such tools, and the tools themselves. “What if the tool loses everything?”
Will the tool still be around in one or two years? If we pour our data into this wiki, am I going to just lose everything if management pulls it down?
Many people just don’t see the point. See social software as something they need to do /in addition/ to what they’re already doing. Parallel with KM disasters.
As you can see, implementing a new work process is less about “the tool” (easy, free) and more about changing the culture of the organization. What’s the key to success? There is no single recipe for all organizations, but one of the most useful approaches is to make sure the leaders use these technologies themselves. People pay attention to what their leaders do. Of course, this implies that your organization has leaders, and not just managers.
Thanks to Amit Agarwal at Digital Inspirations for the tip on Suw’s presentation.
Dr. David Vaine of Apparently KM, PLC illuminates the obfuscation of knowledge management (KM) and the corporate world. Funny and poignant.
Enjoy!
Have you noticed the search results in Google degrading? I find more and more garbage web sites in the results. Sure the top results are usually pretty decent, but some are way off the mark. The problem is, no matter how often the smart people at Google tweak their PR algorhythm, there is an entire army of SEO experts looking to game the system as they try to get on the first page of results. And many of the web sites playing the SEO game are unfortunately pretty lame.
Enter Mahalo. The Hawaiian word for “thank you,” Mahalo bills itself as a human-powered search engine. The value proposition? The search results have all been screened by human editors, ensuring you get just the really good web sites.
In their own words:
Mahalo is the world’s first human-powered search engine powered by an enthusiastic and energetic group of Guides. Our Guides spend their days searching, filtering out spam, and hand-crafting the best search results possible. If they haven’t yet built a search result, you can request that search result. You can also suggest links for any of our search results.
Mahalo has only just launched their alpha today. According to CEO Jason Calacanis, they served 100,000 pages in the first hour of operation.
The idea is appealing, for sure. I took it for a quick spin, of course, testing to see if any of my web sites turned up. First I tried searching for instant messaging, only to be told ‘Oops! We haven’t hand-written a result page for “instant messaging” yet.’ Instead, I’m presented with the option to be notified when they do create their own results page, and a list of (what else?) Google’s search results. Back to square one.
Okay, next I tried “windows live messenger” with the same lack of of hand-crafted results. Hmmm…
They claim they are starting by going after the top terms. Obviously(?) I’m not hitting the top terms yet.
I try searching for the popular VoIP app Skype, and finally hit paydirt!
The results were decent. Without heavy analysis, they seemed to be a streamlined version of what you’d find on the first page of Google’s own search results for skype, plus a few recent Skype news stories (courtesy of Google News).
Each of their hand-written pages also includes a message board, allowing you to discuss what is or isn’t on the page. And you can see who at Mahalo wrote the page. The Skype page, for instance, was written by Dave from Los Angeles. He’s written a bunch of other Mahalo results pages, too. Sadly, Dave hasn’t included a link to BigBlueBall. Fortunately, I can recommend a link, too.
I checked the Skype results message board, but was promptly told that I had to login to participate on the message board. Ok, that means creating an account. So now, I’m User ID 342, a.k.a. Jeff.
What do you think of Mahalo, both in concept and execution? Could Mahalo, or something like it, supplant Google someday? And “Mahalo” for your comments!
UPDATE: BigBlueBall is on Mahalo! The BigBlueBall AIM Center made The Mahalo Top 7 for AOL Instant Messenger.
Professor Gervaise Germaine explains the difference between data, information and knowledge.
Enjoy! 
The social network is a buzzword that every Web 2.0 company has to include in their pitch. But what is it? Does social networking matter, or is it just a bunch of hype?
Here’s my brief, unobjective primer to social networks.
When explaining knowledge management to people, I usually tell them that it’s really nothing new. We have been sharing knowledge for ages, both on a personal level and with larger groups of people. At work, you ask a co-worker a question, and they share an answer. The tacit knowledge of one employee is transferred to another in that social transaction.
Likewise, social networks are not anything new. We all have our own personal networks, subconsciously tagged as family, friends, co-workers, business associates and so on.
Wikipedia describes a social network as “…a social structure made of nodes which are generally individuals or organizations. It indicates the ways in which they are connected through various social familiarities ranging from casual acquaintance to close familial bonds.”
So if social networking is nothing new, what’s all the fuss about?
The popularity of so-called social networking sites like MySpace and LinkedIn have captured the attention of the media. These sites generally revolve around the ability for members to setup a personal profile, and identify connections with other members.
In it’s simplest implementation, MySpace is merely a reflection of pre-existing social network structures. A teenager and his friends join, setup profiles, and add each other to their “friends” list. They already know each other. In this case, the virtual network is a mirror image of their real world network of friends.
The virtual networks make it easier to forge new connections, though the tensile strength of those connections is generally much weaker than real world connections. On MySpace, it’s not uncommon to find people who are looking to add everyone and anyone who will accept them as a friend, sometimes generating tens of thousands of friends. Naturally these are not real friends, and the connection can’t really be considered a relationship.
It’s not always vaccuous. Just as in the real world, people are also creating new relationships through these virtual social networks. Sites like Flickr and Last.fm encourage this by showing other members and giving you an opportunity to meet someone whose photography catches your eye, or who has a similar taste in music. These relationships begin much like the old pen-pal relationships I remember from grade school. They begin as virtual communication, and sometimes extend into the real world.
I have a friend who used to spend a lot of time online, communicating with people all over the world via instant messaging. Her network of friends was vast, but tenuous. Eventually, she chose to pull back from the online network and focus on the people she sees face-to-face (which includes some people that she initially met online at one time).I can understand and respect that choice. The tenuous nature of online-only relationships can be shallow and unfulfilling. People are wired for more than cerebral interaction; like Peter Gabriel said “I need contact!“
Personally, I’ve made a number of new friends online, through discussion forums such as BigBlueBall, shared interest sites like Flickr and even sites like MySpace. Most of them I’ve never met, and I only know them through our online interaction (and their online personae). Some of them I correspond with regularly via instant messaging or voice chat. A few (about seven, so far) I have met ‘IRL’ (in real life), further strengthening the connection.
Some people may find it strange to make friends online, but it’s not much different from meeting new friends in your community. You participate in an activity with other people (going to church; playing tennis; playing World of Warcraft; exploring Second Life). In the process, you meet some people that you get along with, and a friendship begins.
So what does this mean for online social networks, particularly in the context of Web 2.0 and beyond?
My fortune cookie encourages me to expand my social network. It’s good advice, but I’d like to hear from you. How do you recommend I expand my social circle?
John Maloney has posted a great rant on Caterpillar’s recently awarded patent for communities of practice. The patent abstract states:
A method is provided for establishing a community of practice including a plurality of users, one or more experts, and one or more community of practice managers. A need for a community of practice is identified. The roles and responsibilities of participants in the community of practice are identified. One or more goals are identified for the community of practice based on the identified need. A plurality of the participants in the community of practice collaborate to achieve the identified goals.
Maloney correctly argues that the concept of a community of practice (CoP) was created 40 years ago. He’s also correct in questioning Caterpillar’s definition of a community. But misses the key point of the patent application. Caterpillar isn’t laying claim to the concept of a CoP, but the method of establishing a CoP.
Still, I have to admire his find of another excellent KM tool…
I think I can find a good use for this.
Now that the blog is working (and on the new server, I might add), it’s time to recap the first day of User Experience Week. It started at about 3:00 AM yesterday morning, when I left for the airport. Fortunately at that hour, there was no traffic, and the lines for American Airlines weren’t too long. When I finally landed in DC it was 5 PM (I lost three hours). A harrowing shuttle ride later I was checked in at the hotel, and looking forward to a cold beverage at the reception.
The welcome reception was around the corner from the hotel at a pub called the Brickskeller Saloon. They have a very extensive beer list, and I sampled a couple pints. Steven Johnson was signing his latest book at the reception — Everything Bad is Good for You. I discussed how his ideas seemed to be taking hold, as confirmed by the recent research from the University of Toronto which says that the IM lingo popular among teens is not dumbing them down, but is actually “an expansive new linguistic renaissance.” We debated the relative merits of first person shooters such as Quake (I miss playing CTF) and mingled with the other attendees.
Which brings me to Day One. Steven Johnson was the keynote, discussing concepts from one of his first books, Interface Culture. Written at the end of the dot-bomb, he got a few things right and missed others. He nailed blogging right on the head. An insightful opening for the conference. I’m going to have to check out some of his earlier books.
Most of the sessions followed two tracks, meant I had to make some choices. I chose wisely.
Chiara Fox of Adaptive Path presented a really good nuts-and-bolts session titled “Understanding Your Content.” She provided three tools for the process: a content inventory; a content audit; and a content map. All three are used, and all have different purposes. I was struck by the similarities with the content collection process I use for our knowledge management activities. I thank Chiara for introducing a new acronym to my personal vocabulary: ROT. It describes what any content system accumulates over time; stuff that’s redundant, outdated or trivial.
Next, Dan Macaulay of Business Objects (”the Crystal Reports people”) talked about enterprise tagging. I have a passion for tagging, and a vested interest in the topic as I’m in the process of redesigning our current, highly-structured (and somewhat cumbersome) tagging system in our KM environment. There was an interesting concept for presenting information through a tag-based index, inspired by the Flamenco Search Interface Project developed at UC Berkeley, but I found myself wanting the visual cues of depth found in tag clouds. It was also interesting to note that they used Google’s search appliance, and found that it fell short, mainly because of the lack of meta data. Hmmm… could it be that documents need more that a file? Could context really be helpful?
The afternoon session, I attended Brandon Schauer and Steven Toomey’s two-part session titled “Creating Tangible Value with Design.” It could have easily been titled “Creating Tangible Value with Knowledge Management” — the concepts would apply equally well. It all comes back to identifying business goals and finding creative ways to meet them. In their case, they used design. But you could just as easily apply it to KM. And they covered all the bases, from establishing the potential value, measuring success and making decisions.
The final session went way outside the box. The speaker, Kathan Brown, founded Crown Point Press, a special studio that works with artists to create and publish etchings. Brown has authored a book titled Magical Secrets about Thinking Creatively, and provided fascinating look into the creative process. Most of the artists who work with Crown Point are not familiar with the etching process. They generally come for two or three weeks, learn what’s involved, work with the production crew and create their artwork. It was a fascinating business model, and one that has worked for 44 years — as a for-profit enterprise, no less! What was especially interesting was how collaborative the process was. I wonder if knowledge could be created in the manner similar to creating art?
Google earns thanks for sponsoring a pretty decent reception Monday night at Buffalo Billiards. Got a chance to rub elbows with some good folk from the UN (imagine government bureaucracy, multipled!), BT, Xerox, Google, Adaptive Path, the NEA and others in the field. And I learned that geeks like us really aren’t so good with a pool cue.
More to come tomorrow night!
technorati tags: uxweek
A few days ago, I answered the question “what is knowledge?” I’m going to take it one step further, outlining our personal knowledge deficiency, and why we need others to share their knowledge.
To begin, imagine all knowledge could be represented by a circle. What you know is represented as a slice from this knowledge pie. Your slice may grow with education and experience, and the example in my humble pie chart is probably overly generous, but suitable for making my point.
Next, we have what we know we don’t know. This is the knowledge that we know of, but don’t know the details about. For example, I know that when I flip a switch on the wall, a light turns on or off. I know that it’s not magic, but the science of electricity. I don’t know the details, but I’m ok with that. I know that I don’t know how it all works, but I know that someone does.
Beyond the first two slices, and consuming the majority of our knowledge pie, lies what we don’t know that we don’t know (say that ten times fast!). This represents knowledge — truth — that we aren’t even cognizant of. There is a very good chance that someone knows this knowledge, but a substantial part awaits discovery. This represents our opportunity. Knowledge is power, and until we find the secret of omniscience, we need the knowledge of others to achieve more.
Next up, the power of knowledge sharing.
In More than fine I share the stuff I think is worth sharing. I cover Web 2.0 developments, online communities, and knowledge management -- with a heathy dose of randomness to keep you on your toes. Read more...
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